Are you an audio or a visual learner?

I remember my teachers would always make the distinction between the two, like there were certain people that understood subject matter better with visual aids as opposed to others who relied on audio for it to really sink in.

I think I'm both -- depending on what I'm doing.

I am an audio.

i used to read books out loud to myself in college...

i think with very detailed information i need to actually hear it, which is weird, but not so much with more abstract info

visual - if instructions are written down I'll remember them better than if someone tells me, even if I'm really paying attention. If I'm relying solely on audio information, I'll eventually end up scratching my head and going, "Now what was I supposed to do at this part?"

Either is good.

For anything mechanical or physically-based, visual is better. You have to draw me a picture, dude. A chart, a diagram, direction arrows, little quavery motion-lines, anything that shows how it works in space and time.

When I am listening intently, I tend not to look at the person speaking, so I can better process the content of their words without visual distractions. When I read books, it helps enormously if the author has a "voice" I can "hear" as I read.

Whichever way the information comes, I tend to interpret it in the most literal and concrete form that I can. Abstractions have to make some clear point of contact with things before they make any sense at all to me.

When I am listening intently, I tend not to look at the person speaking, so I can better process the content of their words without visual distractions.

i do this too sometimes

don't forget tactile / kinesthetic learners.

i am equally in between.

I think my concrete literalness is why I was a good tech writer.

For me, language is always concrete at the bottom, even if sometimes that aspect is buried in layers of bumpf. This near-interchangability of objects and language makes me ambidextrous in terms of learning and communicating, but I have to say that language is every bit as beautiful to me as nature is.

as an educator i have a bit of a beef with this idea. not because i don't buy into it - i do - but because like a lot of educational ideas designed to empower kids and parents it's more often the case that it's naively empowering rather than actually as genuinely helpful as it could be.

the problem is that people tend to see these as boxes rather than as continuums. it would be nice if all kids and parents understood this on the level that aimless does, but instead you more often get "my kid's a visual learner - please don't do any lecture this year".

also these are human-constructed categories and not actual parts or functions of the brain. we like them because they're easily understood and nicely map onto senses, but they don't capture the fullness and richness of learning. i learn best when i read and write in response - is that visual or auditory? i say the words out loud in my head as i read and write, but sometimes i write things over and over again because the "shape" of words is important in my mind. so what is that type of brain activity, visual or auditory?

so what people need to do is figure out which steps on the continuum are best for them, and how to bring those modalities *into* other types of learning.

like, i have kids who swear they can't learn by reading, because *that* is visual, and instead learn by talking, because *they* are auditory. and when they read out loud they dumbly race through the entire text like horse race announcers, without ever stopping to converse with the text, ask themselves a question, state an opinion about what they're reading, etc.

kids need to learn how to do that instead of learning what box they're in, but too often teachers give kids a standardized test, tell the kids what the test "reveals" about their brains, what kind of person they are, etc, and leaves it at that.

agreed, that there should be more emphasis on the continuum between the 2.

there have been studies showing that people who visualize the potential outcome of a situation are better prepared for it than those who don't. but being someone who often focuses on the importance of sound, i tend to forget this idea.

writing is really helpful for me, too

i think i learn best via messageboard - sorry to always go off on these threads, but really reading and writing response is one of my strongest ways of learning. i am not a particularly good teacher, but i am considered very articulate and learned on matters of teacher theory by my peers. but that's only because i've articulated and confronted and learned and taught and re-learned all of those ideas via ILX.

messageboard learning has the potential to be very powerful and obviously everyone on ILX shares to some extent an affinity with that mode of the brain.

there have been studies showing that people who visualize the potential outcome of a situation are better prepared for it than those who don't.

ah, but don't forget that there are a million ways to "visualize" something that are not necessarily just pictures in the brain. write a story, tell a story, hear it like a radio play, etc

visual / tactile.

I do techie shit. All during university and even now, I need to physically do something in order to process new information. If it was code, I would have to type it out just to get the basic set-up down. If it was gear, I need to physically muck about with it, strip it apart or re-wire something, then I have it down. If it was math or any sort of formulae, I need to do example problems and actually sit down and write everything out. New information flows into my brain best thru my hands.

My idiot now-former boss didn't understand this, but himself had massive issues with understanding how brain patterns & thinking processes other than his could work and/or still be valid.

When I was still in school, i eventually learned that I helped process things best by recopying my notes. Switching my internal systems from "listening/watching -> note-taking" to "note-copying -> re-organization" usually gave me better odds at retention.

Of course, I've since destroyed all that with beer, but whatareyagunnado....

xpost

actually one of my coworkers did his dissertation on learning via student blogging, reading and comment box-ing, and he's actually working to set up a message board adjunct to our school for kids who can only make it like once a week to class because of different situations (distance, health, choice, etc)

btw there is a very strong correlation between success in education (through postgraduate) and self-aware understanding of "how you learn best".

not surprised

tactile/kinesthetic - definitely. I wonder how much the act of writing something down is visual and if it's partly tactile. I guess it would depend on what is being learned.

the problem is that people tend to see these as boxes rather than as continuums

I think it's also important, at least useful, to be able to learn in multiple ways, even though some come easier than others. Definitely the people who put themselves in learning-style boxes (and the kids whose parents do this for them) end up at a disadvantage in the real world. Learning to play music generally requires all three types. I know that having spent so much time learning things visually has made it harder for me to learn a song by listening to it, and I have to make myself try to learn that way as opposed to finding sheet music.

When I was still in school, i eventually learned that I helped process things best by recopying my notes. Switching my internal systems from "listening/watching -> note-taking" to "note-copying -> re-organization" usually gave me better odds at retention.

I think I did something similar - I'd look through my notes or re-read the text and make outlines with arrows and bullet points or lists in different areas of a page of paper to figure out or plot out the structure of an essay or project.

In grad school, we had to take a semester-long class in thesis/final project preparation. Most of it involved doing research, but a bit of it was learning and organization stuff. They made us put all of our points and ideas on index cards and physically arrange and order the index cards to structure the writing.

yeah, i had to do the index card thing too. and i did actually come to find it very useful.

what i find interesting is the different ways in which people do or do not utilize language in organizing their thoughts. when you're thinking about something, do you see the words in your mind, or hear them, or what?

I am an olfactory learner.

Visual I guess. I seem to prefer having things e.g. instructions written down, would rather read news on the net than listen to the radio, plus I just love the whole presentation side of visual information so much.